Sheffield Green Commission’s fourth public hearing

Sheffield’s Green Commission will be holding its fourth hearing in public next month and limited places are now on offer to members of the public wishing to attend.

The Commission was set up to allow leaders from across the public and private sector to make sure environmental issues are given a high priority over the next 15-20 years.

It will have its fourth public hearing on Tuesday (12 May) at 6pm at the University of Sheffield’s landmark building. The event is co-hosted by the University.

Professor Martin Mayfield, Professor of Engineering Design at the University of Sheffield said: “The University is delighted to be hosting the Sheffield Green Commission. Collaborations of this kind, between the public, private, third and higher education sector have enormous potential to find creative solutions to problems which are both global and local.”

Evidence will be presented by four witnesses: David Rudlin, Director of the URBED Trust; Eddie Murphy, Technical Director of Mott MacDonald; Nigel Sagar, Senior Sustainability Manager from SKANSKA and Gary Topp, Development Manager at Bristol Green Capital Partnership Community Interest Company. The expert witness testimony will be followed by a “Question time format” debate with the audience.

The Commission will sit over several months and collect evidence, both oral and written, as well as holding debates and hearing from expert witnesses. Each session will create a number of recommendations and at each intermediate stage written documents will be published on the Council website at Sheffield Green Commission

This meeting is the fourth of six hearings to be held in public, after which a report will be produced with short, medium and long term (20 year) recommendations for Sheffield City Council’s Cabinet to consider.

Up to 200 places are available for the meeting on 12 May on a ‘first come, first served’ basis and anyone wishing to attend or join the Green Commission mailing list can register by e-mailing greencommission@sheffield.gov.uk .

There are a number of key themes being considered by the Commission: sustainable transport; low carbon energy and resource efficiency; sustainable growth and a low carbon economy; climate change; the blue and green infrastructure that contributes towards the quality of life; communication, engagement, education and behavioural change; and health and well-being. Improving health and well-being underpins the other six topics.

Ends

Notes for editors:
Expert Witness Biographies:
David Rudlin, URBED
David Rudlin manages URBED (Urbanism Environment and Design) and also a director of the URBED Trust. He is a planner by training and started his career with Manchester City Council with responsibility for the early stages of the redevelopment of Hulme. He was also secretary of the Homes for Change housing cooperative, responsible for commissioning one of the flagship buildings of the Hulme Redevelopment. He also co-wrote the Hulme Guide to Development.
He joined URBED in 1990 to manage the BURA award-winning Little Germany Action project in Bradford. Since then he has managed a range of high profile consultancy projects including the Oldham Beyond Vision and the Selby Renaissance Charter for Yorkshire Forward. He has also been responsible for private sector masterplans such as Temple Quay 2 in Bristol, The New England Quarter in Brighton and the 4,500 home Southall Gasworks masterplan in West London.
He is the author of a number of research reports including ’21st Century Homes’ for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, ‘Tomorrow a peaceful path to urban reform’ for Friends of the Earth and ‘But would you live there?’ for the Urban Task Force. This writing is summarised in a book for the Architectural Press. The second edition ‘Sustainable Urban Neighbourhood’ was published in 2009 and was described by Richard Rogers as ‘the best analysis (he) had read of the crisis facing the contemporary city’ and has also been published in China. Some of David’s writings are also available on his Climax City blog.
David was a member of the CABE design review committee from 2002 to 2005 and a trustee of CUBE (the Centre for the Understanding of the Built Environment) in Manchester from 1999 to 2005. He is Chair of Beam in Wakefield, joint Chair of the Sheffield Design Panel and a founder Academician of the Academy for Urbanism.
David recently won the 2014 Wolfson Economic Prize, answering the question ‘How would you deliver a new garden city which is visionary, economically viable, and popular?’
http://urbed.coop/team/david-rudlin
info@urbed.coop
@URBEDmcr

Nigel Sagar, Senior Sustainability Manager, SKANSKA
January 2009 – Present (6 years 4 months)|Leeds / London
According to Skanska senior sustainability manager Nigel Sagar, the company’s aspiration is “to be seen as the leading sustainable contractor and developer”, and it has made public commitments to move towards what it calls a “deep green” or zero carbon world.
@SkanskaUKplc
http://www.skanska.co.uk/

Gary Topp, Development Manager, Bristol Green Capital Partnership
Gary is a highly experienced CEO and manager in the sustainability, cultural and not for profit sectors. He specialises in delivering projects related to city and regional change agendas involving a range of public, private and third sector partners. He describes this as the ‘polymath’ space – the leadership space that is an interaction of various disciplines contributing to creating change and innovation. Gary has led several organisations through a process of change and reinvention in both executive and non-executive positions in the UK and Australia.
http://bristolgreencapital.org/about/how-it-works/

Eddie Murphy, Technical Director, Mott MacDonald
Edward is a graduate of University of the South Bank, London with a degree in Building Services. He is a chartered building services engineer with a proven track record in design and project management of high profile low energy buildings. In his career to date he has been involved in the design and management of a number of award winning low carbon projects.
Most recently he has turned his attention to closing the gap between predicted design and actual in use energy use in buildings. His team has just won the 2013 CIBSE Performance Award for the design and implementation of 2 St Paul’s Place for the DfE, considered now to be the lowest energy sealed and comfort cooled office building on the government estate. He has just embarked on a 2 year research programme with UCL Bartlett School to develop a radically different approach for pre and post occupancy evaluation of buildings to better inform designers decision making processes.
Mott MacDonald is a world-class engineering, management and development consultancy delivering solutions that add value to many areas of everyday life – from transport, energy, buildings, water and the environment to health and education, industry and communications. Mott MacDonald is a wholly independent, employee-owned company with a turnover of Â£515 million, 9000 staff and work in over 100 countries.
https://www.mottmac.com/about-us
@edwrdmrphy8